T.R. felt sick to his stomach on Friday. This would have been no big deal, except that we were about to embark on a road trip to Tahoe. Even so, it was not a huge deal, in that he felt sick when we were nearly at his dad’s house, where we planned to drop Syd, who is allergic to weekends away from his girlfriend.

After trying a couple of things, we collectively figured out that T. needed to stay with his dad and Brent and I sallied forth alone. Except for that twinge of guilt. My baby felt sick and I was going off to have fun! One of the major reasons for choosing to go to Tahoe was because T. wanted to ski. How could I?

I got over it. I quieted my conscience by remembering that I wasn’t abandoning the kid, just letting his dad take care of him instead of doing it myself. I emailed to see how he was doing and, not surprisingly, T. felt gross, but managed to watch crappy television. He’ll be fine.

And I skied. I skied all by myself, choosing whatever run I felt most like doing, going at a speed appropriate to my own level rather than one that kept T. below me so I could help him collect up his “yard sales.” (This is a term we learned from a friendly ski patrol guy last year, who, seeing that T. had scattered every piece of his equipment over the slope and was perfectly all right, suggested we have a yard sale…) I was apparently having enough fun to be remarkable, since lift operators kept commenting and talking to me.

My new boots are awesome. I stopped skiing when my legs were tired and the snow felt too icy, not when my feet couldn’t take it anymore. The new skis rock. I had to adjust to having poles that are the correct size for my height, since I’ve been using my dad’s hand-me-downs for years and he is much taller than I am, but that is not a complaint!

It was cold, but mostly sunny yesterday. The wind blew sparkles of snow off the trees to scintillate in the clear air. I heard mostly the wind and the crunch and scrape of the snow under my skis, except when I was near the lifts, when the soundtrack switched to reggae. I didn’t have to wear a stupid hat.

When I was too cold and tired to keep going, I went to the lodge and had hot chocolate with peppermint schnapps in it. Life is good.